November 2014

You heard that right: you can now buy a car with a few clicks of a virtual button. The U.S. Census Bureau recently found that American consumers are open to using text to sell vehicles and communicate post-purchase.

More promising news: consumers are more interested in using text purchasing than they were last year.

So then, why is it so hard to open our minds to the idea of digital commerce? It’s not like we’ve already done it before…

Big news! OneReach has joined the Desk.com App Hub, an app marketplace armed with the customer experience tools small businesses need to grow.

OneReach’s ActionDesk platform is the only text-enabled, automated phone system available on the Hub, providing a valuable resource for businesses who want to use SMS to reach clients. Harnessing the power of screen pops and multiple channels, agents can provide a better, more personalized customer experience. Even when agents are away, customers can still get the support they need through automation.

If you’re a business owner, there might be two tools you are not utilizing that can increase your ROI. Those tools are live chat and text messages. Why should you even think about using live chat and text messages? Let’s look at this information from Econsultancy and Valpak.

As anyone in customer support knows, a first time customer can become a repeat customer with customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction can be achieved in many, many ways, but this article is to address just one of them: customer nurturing.

In today’s hands on culture, the customer expects more. Customer nurturing is treating your customer like they are the CEO’s best friend; or more simply, treating them like a friend. It doesn’t matter if this is an individual, a small business, or a business partner. Everyone has the the potential to help your company flourish, so they should be treated special. This is what customer nurturing is, and it’s an important aspect of customer support.

Safe to say at this point that the whole “Internet” thing is here to stay. With the not-so recent proliferation of everything Internet, several emerging areas of science and expertise have naturally evolved. One of these such areas is the study of user experience.

As defined by the Godfather of usability himself, Jakob Neilsen, user experience is the all encompassing aspects of the end users interaction with the company, its services, and its products. Sure, some other websites will provide a more detailed definition of the term, but Neilsen’s words are really all we need to focus on what’s truly important.

You may not be a doctor, but you’ve been a patient. And you’ve definitely had to call in to a doctor’s office before. How do you recall that experience going? Was it simple, quick, and effortless? Was the staff member you spoke with warm, friendly, and helpful? Or was it a rushed experience, lacking of context and generally unpleasant?

Unfortunately, it was probably the latter. And no matter how unpleasant it was for you, just imagine what it must be like for that staff member whose job is to handle dozens or even hundreds of those encounters a day.

Given the hierarchical nature of healthcare communications, where each provider is surrounded by a layer of full-time employees, who collectively serve a patient population that could number in the thousands, the communication process is inherently challenging. To make matters worse, staff are given rudimentary tools to communicate with patients, referring physicians, pharmacies, and payers. How can they be expected to manage everything?

On an ordinary day in most places in the industrialized world you can see hoards of people buried in their phones, fingers flying away typing out text messages to one another. Texting has become a primary means of communication these days, particularly among younger demographics who have had texting available most of their life.

Having a “mobile strategy” goes beyond just having a mobile application and mobile friendly website. It means using all of the capabilities of today’s mobile phones and understanding the role that these devices play in the lives of your customers.

How much of a role? Not to get too personal, but more people would rather give up sex than give up their phone. A study found that 26% of Americans said they couldn’t live without their smartphone, while only 20% of Americans said they couldn’t live without sex. The same study found that 44% of people sleep with their phone at night, and 67% check their phone even if it’s not ringing.